In plant as in animal life, there is this wonderful power of accommodation to circumstances which might otherwise prove entirely adverse to the continuation of that life. Instinct is the term applied to vegetable as well as animal life. We use it for want of a better, although it certainly does not cover all that is implied in innumerable instances.
A thoughtful writer says that instinct, which belongs to the physiological expression of life, has no other end or function than the maintenance of these forms, whence it never operates without manifesting effects in the organic mechanism. Reason, on the other hand, has no relation to the body, except as the soul’s body or instrument; it belongs to the soul purely, and may be exercised without giving the slightest external token.
“The life whose phenomena are the instincts impels us only to eat, to drink, to propagate, to preserve our fabric safe and sound; the spiritual life, the phenomena of which are forms of reason, gives power, not to do corporeal things, but to think and to rise emotionally towards the source of life. It is by reason of this supra-instinctive life that man stands as the universal master.”
The great naturalist Buffon also says, “Man thinks, hence he is master over creatures which do not think.” And an ancient author writes finely, “While other animals bend their looks downwards to earth, He gave to man a lofty countenance, commanded him to lift his face to heaven, and behold with upturned eyes the stars.”
This has been a digression into which the use of the term instinct led me. Instinct leads the carnivorous animal to feed on flesh; but if this is scarce—even if fruit is plentiful, and offers itself in profusion—the puma will devour wild gooseberries and raspberries; so will the coyote wolves in the Rocky Mountains. I stayed for some time in a mountain region in Colorado—the district in which I made my notes for “Candelaria,” a story some of you have perhaps read in the pages of this magazine—and there in the autumn the big bears would come in their heavy rolling gait down the mountain-sides to devour the wild fruits, “choke cherries” and the like.
The power of accommodation to the exigencies of circumstance is so great that, as scientists will tell you, species will often develop through these, in time, an extra member. And again, faculties and powers, by their non-use, will desert us in time. Our power of adaptability is in point of fact beyond calculation. “All things are possible to him that believeth” is a truth too little tested by most of us.
Could yon slender reed, which is swayed by the slightest breeze, stand the fierce onslaught of a tempest? No, but it bends gracefully before it and escapes unhurt where stouter stems have been snapped asunder.
And, to take a simile from the bird world, all the herons, the different species of the Ardeidæ, which have ordinarily a slow and heavily flapping flight, when alarmed or pursued by their natural enemies, have a habit of easing themselves. They will disgorge the food which they have just swallowed in order to lighten themselves for more rapid flight.
This reminds me of a little incident in my own life. Some years ago I was in a collision at sea; the bow of a large steamer ran into the stern of the vessel in which I was, when both were going at top speed, and both vessels went down beneath the waters almost as soon as we passengers, most of us in our night clothing, had got free in the small boats. Over fifty lives, unfortunately, were lost that night, but only one woman out of very many others perished. That need not have been, but she was timid, and she would not risk the leap that other women had had to make down into the boat which waited for her ten feet below. As soon as the boat in which I was, arrived, a few hours later, alongside of a rescuing steamer, the women were most of them taken up into this by means of a rope and band fastened round the waist, but I climbed up a rope ladder which was overhung on the side of the ship. In order to grasp this firmly with both hands I had to lose my hold of a bag I had contrived to save, in which were some valuables very dear to me. I put it down on the boat seat, and of course I never saw it again. My precious things were lost, but my life was saved. A poor lady who was in the same wreck suffered a still greater loss, and she was one of those conservative sensitive natures who find it so hard to adapt themselves to changeful circumstances. She has never recovered her mental balance since that terrible night.
To preserve a trustful, cheerful frame of mind under adverse circumstances, to be able to adjust one’s resources, one’s capabilities to the exigencies of a life so liable to changes, is a gift for which the possessor cannot be too grateful to the Giver of all good gifts.